# 12 years old, both arms blown off, family dead, but hey - he's FREE! **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [April 9, 2003, 9:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/12-years-old-both-arms-blown-off-family-dead-but-hey-hes-free/167517 "2003-04-09T09:57:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 10
**Author:** ![Rilchiam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/2bfe46/32.png) [@Rilchiam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rilchiam)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2003, 10:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/12-years-old-both-arms-blown-off-family-dead-but-hey-hes-free/167517/181 "2003-04-11T10:18:44Z")
I am neither of those things. ---
**Author:** ![London\_Calling](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/49beb7/32.png) [@London\_Calling](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/London_Calling)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2003, 10:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/12-years-old-both-arms-blown-off-family-dead-but-hey-hes-free/167517/182 "2003-04-11T10:20:09Z")
Look, if you want to wallow in some kind of delusional non-Isolationist bullshit, that’s up to you. Out here in the real world, it’s pretty well understood who made the major contribution to stopping Hitler and it wasn’t the US. Sure the Soviet Union, like ‘the beacon of democracy’, had to be attacked first, but thereafter, it, arguably, contributed more than the rest of the world combined in defeating Fascism. The US ? Please get a less offensive grip. ---
**Author:** ![London\_Calling](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/49beb7/32.png) [@London\_Calling](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/London_Calling)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2003, 10:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/12-years-old-both-arms-blown-off-family-dead-but-hey-hes-free/167517/183 "2003-04-11T10:23:30Z")
That **yojimbo** , he can bellow a bit 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Rilchiam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/2bfe46/32.png) [@Rilchiam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rilchiam)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2003, 10:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/12-years-old-both-arms-blown-off-family-dead-but-hey-hes-free/167517/184 "2003-04-11T10:24:26Z")
Sigh… **elucidator** said “War is the most vile expression of human depravity”. My response was, “What about WWII?” Show me where I said that **America** was responsible for stopping Hitler. ---
**Author:** ![Typo\_Negative](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/typo_negative/32/484_2.png) [@Typo\_Negative](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Typo_Negative)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2003, 10:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/12-years-old-both-arms-blown-off-family-dead-but-hey-hes-free/167517/185 "2003-04-11T10:25:29Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by London\_Calling \* > \*\*Look, if you want to wallow in some kind of delusional non-Isolationist bullshit, that’s up to you. Out here in the real world, it’s pretty well understood who made the major contribution to stopping Hitler and it wasn’t the US. > > . > > The US ? Please get a less offensive grip. \*\* OK. Thank you for sharing. ::walks away whislting nervously:: ---
**Author:** ![London\_Calling](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/49beb7/32.png) [@London\_Calling](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/London_Calling)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2003, 10:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/12-years-old-both-arms-blown-off-family-dead-but-hey-hes-free/167517/186 "2003-04-11T10:32:51Z")
If that’s the case, I misread your intent and apologise profusely. In fact, after the past 2 days of real life and online jingoism, I might be a little jaded. ---
**Author:** ![yojimbo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yojimbo/32/232_2.png) [@yojimbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yojimbo)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2003, 10:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/12-years-old-both-arms-blown-off-family-dead-but-hey-hes-free/167517/187 "2003-04-11T10:34:55Z")
\*\* He said he’s sorry \*\* 😃 I’ll go now. ---
**Author:** ![Rilchiam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/2bfe46/32.png) [@Rilchiam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rilchiam)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2003, 10:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/12-years-old-both-arms-blown-off-family-dead-but-hey-hes-free/167517/188 "2003-04-11T10:35:57Z")
Quite all right! ---
**Author:** ![Rilchiam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/2bfe46/32.png) [@Rilchiam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rilchiam)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2003, 10:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/12-years-old-both-arms-blown-off-family-dead-but-hey-hes-free/167517/189 "2003-04-11T10:37:19Z")
**Quite all right!** ---
**Author:** ![London\_Calling](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/49beb7/32.png) [@London\_Calling](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/London_Calling)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2003, 10:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/12-years-old-both-arms-blown-off-family-dead-but-hey-hes-free/167517/190 "2003-04-11T10:38:34Z")
He always has to go when it’s his round … ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2003, 12:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/12-years-old-both-arms-blown-off-family-dead-but-hey-hes-free/167517/191 "2003-04-11T12:39:05Z")
I swear, **Scylla** , you fall off that high horse, you’ll break every bone in your body! “You tell other people what they think.” Compare and contrast with: “…playing at moral outrage in order to pimp your political agenda…” “You don’t know me” Aw contrary, as we say in Lubbock. You have been very sharing, very open as you explore the labyrinthian complexity that is **Scylla**. I know roughly where you live (semi-rural), your occupation, the cars you drive, your recreational preferences (running and blasting helpless animals), your religious preference (conservative Catholic) your education (parochial), your wife (from Texas and endowed with saintly patience and forbearing), your children, your sexual fantasies (doughnut girls). And your family. Quite a bit about them. In comparison, St. Augustine’s _Confessions_ is only a couple of lines in _Who’s Who_. I know **Minty** is a lawyer, from Texas. I know **Dewey** is a lawyer, not from Texas. About you, I know lots. Thanks for sharing. ---
**Author:** ![Weirddave](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/919ad9/32.png) [@Weirddave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Weirddave)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2003, 1:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/12-years-old-both-arms-blown-off-family-dead-but-hey-hes-free/167517/192 "2003-04-11T13:15:30Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by London\_Calling \* > \*\*Look, if you want to wallow in some kind of delusional non-Isolationist bullshit, that’s up to you. Out here in the real world, it’s pretty well understood who made the major contribution to stopping Hitler and it wasn’t the US. > > Sure the Soviet Union, like ‘the beacon of democracy’, had to be attacked first, but thereafter, it, arguably, contributed more than the rest of the world combined in defeating Fascism. > > The US ? Please get a less offensive grip. \*\* Y’know, you’re awfuly vehement about a point that is debateable at best and at worst is simply revisionalist history taken to the extreme, “Oh, I don’t like what America is doing to Iraq, so I’ll try and change what happend in the past”. ---
**Author:** ![yojimbo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yojimbo/32/232_2.png) [@yojimbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yojimbo)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2003, 1:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/12-years-old-both-arms-blown-off-family-dead-but-hey-hes-free/167517/193 "2003-04-11T13:21:37Z")
Errrrmmm the Russian contribution to the fall of the Germany was at least as vital as the US’s. I don’t think there is much debate about that, outside of the US anyway. ---
**Author:** ![Uzi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/91b2a8/32.png) [@Uzi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Uzi)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2003, 1:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/12-years-old-both-arms-blown-off-family-dead-but-hey-hes-free/167517/194 "2003-04-11T13:39:49Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by yojimbo \* > \*\*Errrrmmm the Russian contribution to the fall of the Germany was at least as vital as the US’s. I don’t think there is much debate about that, outside of the US anyway. \*\* The USSR didn’t have much choice in the matter when their German allies finally turned on them. The US was only obliged to take on the Japanese after they were attacked by them. I don’t see why the US had to help the Europeans out of another war they had allowed to happen in the first place, but there you go. USSR: made a pact with Germany to allow them to invade Poland in exchange for part of it and thus allowed Germany to start its expansionism in the first place. They got burnt badly by it. US: attacked by Japan in the Pacific, not Germany. No reason to go to war with Germany other than the goodness of its heart as far as I can see. (Must we mention what the Irish were doing about Hitler at that time?) ---
**Author:** ![CrankyAsAnOldMan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crankyasanoldman/32/11670_2.png) [@CrankyAsAnOldMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CrankyAsAnOldMan)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2003, 3:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/12-years-old-both-arms-blown-off-family-dead-but-hey-hes-free/167517/195 "2003-04-11T15:11:59Z")
Miller, I know it sounds crazy–and in fact it’s probably a topic for an entirely different thread. I know for world political and economic stability it’s a bad thing to run around assassinating leaders. But it just galls me that little people die on both sides because we can’t go in there and just grab Saddam by the nuts and yank until he bleeds to death. It’s perverse, on a certain level. And I apologize for taking the line that seems like such a cop-out “I don’t know what the alternative is but someone else can figure it out.” It’s painfully similar to my parenting. I know beating my kid isn’t the answer, but I’ll be damned if I can figure out the best way to get him to behave. I keep reading parenting books and I’d like to think I’ll find the answer, but _not_ knowing the answer doesn’t mean my position on NOT pounding him is entirely invalid. I know what doesn’t feel right. Of course, after reading Scylla’s response, should I have prefaced this entire post by detailing to you all my volunteer work so I could be more credible? ---
**Author:** ![Scylla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a5b964/32.png) [@Scylla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scylla)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2003, 3:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/12-years-old-both-arms-blown-off-family-dead-but-hey-hes-free/167517/196 "2003-04-11T15:39:29Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by elucidator \* > \*\* > > Aw contrary, as we say in Lubbock. You have been very sharing, very open as you explore the labyrinthian complexity that is **Scylla**. I know roughly where you live (semi-rural), your occupation, the cars you drive, your recreational preferences (running and blasting helpless animals), your religious preference (conservative Catholic) your education (parochial), your wife (from Texas and endowed with saintly patience and forbearing), your children, your sexual fantasies (doughnut girls). And your family. Quite a bit about them. In comparison, St. Augustine’s _Confessions_ is only a couple of lines in _Who’s Who_. > > I know **Minty** is a lawyer, from Texas. I know **Dewey** is a lawyer, not from Texas. > > About you, I know lots. Thanks for sharing. \*\* What kind of crack are you smoking? Knowing a few surface details doesn’t give you the athority to attribute attitudes and arguments to people that they haven’t made. You know me hardly at all, and certainly not well enough to put words or arguments into my mouth. And I repeat: What the hell are you smoking that you are actually going to argue with me about what I think or beleive or don’t? I note also, that you also didn’t do particularly well with the surface details that you think you do know. ---
**Author:** ![yojimbo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yojimbo/32/232_2.png) [@yojimbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yojimbo)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2003, 3:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/12-years-old-both-arms-blown-off-family-dead-but-hey-hes-free/167517/197 "2003-04-11T15:59:56Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Uzi \* > The USSR didn’t have much choice in the matter when their German allies finally turned on them. The US was only obliged to take on the Japanese after they were attacked by them. I don’t see why the US had to help the Europeans out of another war they had allowed to happen in the first place, but there you go. > USSR: made a pact with Germany to allow them to invade Poland in exchange for part of it and thus allowed Germany to start its expansionism in the first place. They got burnt badly by it. > US: attacked by Japan in the Pacific, not Germany. No reason to go to war with Germany other than the goodness of its heart as far as I can see. > (Must we mention what the Irish were doing about Hitler at that time?) So what? This has nothing whatsoever to my point. I was just addressing how important Russian involvement was to the outcome of the war. A lot of Americans I have met seem to have the impression that the US did it al on their own and tend to forget about the Eastern front completely. Whatever got them there is another point all together. BTW you can bring up Ireland and what they were doing or not doing all you want. I don’t take criticism of my country personally especially about events that happed 40 years before I was born. ---
**Author:** ![yojimbo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yojimbo/32/232_2.png) [@yojimbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yojimbo)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2003, 4:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/12-years-old-both-arms-blown-off-family-dead-but-hey-hes-free/167517/198 "2003-04-11T16:02:03Z")
> [@](#): > > 40 years before I was born. I wish. 30 years is more accurate 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Weirddave](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/919ad9/32.png) [@Weirddave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Weirddave)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2003, 4:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/12-years-old-both-arms-blown-off-family-dead-but-hey-hes-free/167517/199 "2003-04-11T16:20:54Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by yojimbo \* > \*\*Errrrmmm the Russian contribution to the fall of the Germany was at least as vital as the US’s. I don’t think there is much debate about that, outside of the US anyway. \*\* No, I’m not saying that at all. The USSR certainly paid the highest price in blood by far. But: U.S. Supplies kept Russia aloat until those T-34s could start rolling off assembly lines far behind the lines in bulk. Without the U.S., Japan runs wild in the Pacific, Australia certainly would have been conqured, then what? India? Perhaps they would have divided Russia’a attention with attack on the far eastern portions of Russian territory, or forced them to commit troops to the south as Japan threatened down there. For that matter, Britan certainly owes a lot of their resiliancy to lend-lease. And while we’re at it, the 3rd army would have done to the Russians in Berlin what Patton did to Monty in Salerno if it hadn’t been ordered to stop so that Zukhov and Konev would have the “honor” of sacking Berlin. Oh, and that whole second front thing, how many German troops did that tie up, preventing them from being available in the east? Do you think the U.K had the moxie to invade the continent on it’s own hook? Face it, without the US, the entire war turns out differently. Ultimately, I do think that the USSR would have beaten back Germany, but much later and with a much higher cost in lives. Oh, and finally, without the US, Russia wouldn’t have stopped with Germany, they would have rolled over all of Western Europe too. So basically, yes, I have a problem with the statement “it’s pretty well understood who made the major contribution to stopping Hitler and it wasn’t the US” ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2003, 10:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/12-years-old-both-arms-blown-off-family-dead-but-hey-hes-free/167517/200 "2003-04-11T22:49:31Z")
But, cryin’ out loud, **Scylla** , you do exactly that! You got no idea about this guys sincerity, yet you presume to look into his mind and judge that he’s simply using this kids pain to “pimp for his agenda”. And then you turn right around and get all huffy when it happens to you. You’re just as easy as the rest of us sluts, **Scylla** , but you keep insisting you’re the only virgin in the bunch. It just ain’t so. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/12-years-old-both-arms-blown-off-family-dead-but-hey-hes-free/167517.md?page=9) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/12-years-old-both-arms-blown-off-family-dead-but-hey-hes-free/167517.md?page=11)